BEHIND THE COUNTER CULTURE

Joe Strummer and Keith Allen are among the artists working in a London record store - and encouraging shoppers to go 'Carbon Neutral'...

Joe Strummer, KEITH ALLEN, former Spandau Ballet star GARY KEMP and WORLD PARTY‘s KARL WALLINGER all worked behind the tills at TOWER RECORDS in LONDON last night, to raise awareness of the campaign for going ‘CARBON NEUTRAL’.

All four served customers for almost an hour at the store on Piccadilly Circus, working in conjunction with the organisation Future Forests – whose aim is to encourage companies and individuals to go ‘Carbon Neutral’ by planting trees to offset Carbon Dioxide emissions from industry.

The stars were asking customers buying CDs in the store to purchase a ‘Carbon Neutral Month’ for #6, which would pay for enough trees to be planted to offset the emissions of Carbon Dioxide associated with the manufacture and delivery of their records.

Speaking to nme.com about his participation, actor and Fat Les svengali Keith Allen said: “I think you’ve heard it before, it’s an environmentally led concern that doesn’t make you feel guilty. It’s very easy to get involved by simply buying a tree, which counteracts the Carbon Dioxide and makes the world a prettier place to be.”

Former Spandau Ballet star Gary Kemp added: “It’s a good idea. We all contribute to the emissions every time we buy a CD. That CD has been manufactured and a certain amount of Carbon Dioxide has gone into the air so maybe to neutralise that by planting a tree is a good idea. ”

Allen joked that Fat Les had entered a song for the upcoming Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, he said: “We did a song for the Olympics which was turned down by the BOA…it was called ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’!”

Allen has put Fat Les on the backburner for the immediate future, and is now going to work on a film with Nicole Kidman called ‘The Others’, shot in Madrid.

To see the video interview with Keith Allen makes a joke about what he was up to with Fat Les, click on one of the following: ISDN [url=]Broadband

To see the video interview with Gary Kemp explaining the project, click on one of the following: ISDN [url=]Broadband